“You smell that?”
And then, the wisp of thick, sulfurous smoke curled upward out of the floorboards. Jake grabbed one of the dining room chairs and swung at it.
“No, don’t—“ Helena said, belatedly.
The smoke burst into a hundred tiny man-size creatures the size of large roaches and all of them immediately started scattering in every direction.
“Ohhh shit.” Helena whipped out a wand and started zapping as many of them as she could reach, while I tried to stomp on them, but they didn’t have any substance.
“What are these diabolical things?” Jake growled as one ran over his foot. “I can feel them but I can’ttouch them!”
“They’re paper imps!” Helena said. She kept blasting them as they were crawling up the walls. “They hate salt. See if there’s salt in the kitchen and then—meet me in the library!” She dashed off. Her hair was in a ponytail today and I got a nice swish of blonde hair and citrus shampoo before she ran for the stairs.
“How many of these houses have we done by now? And I have never heard of paper imps,” Jake said, giving me a skeptical look.
“Me neither,” I agreed.
“Yeah, because you guys don’t pay money for the good magical houses!” Helena screamed. “You’re too busy thinking about open floor plans!”
Jake sighed and started moseying into the kitchen without much urgency. “She’s a strange girl, that’s for sure.”
“We need to help her,” I said, as I noticed a few of the creepy things climbing into the cabinets. I opened one. The imps were shadowy figures, slightly translucent and dark like shadows, and they were shaped like two-inch high people, but they didn’t really have faces or anything. They were just shapes. However, they apparently had teeth because they were nibbling on boxes of cereal as well as a container of Morton salt. I grabbed the salt, popped open the lid, and sprinkled some on them. They melted on contact with a tiny Wicked Witch of the West cry.
Jake held out his hands and I poured a pile of salt in them. We rarely needed to actually give each other directions when something needed doing.
We went up the stairs scattering salt on every imp we saw and found Helena in a library upstairs frantically zapping the imps as they nibbled on papers all over the desk and the books on the shelves. She was breathing heavily as she whirled one way and then the other trying to get the most aggressive ones before they did any damage.
“I’ve got the desk!” I said. “Jake, you get that wall!”
Helena could now focus on the longest stretch of shelves and she didn’t have to whirl around anymore, which was too bad, because again—she had sexy hair and it wasn’t in braids today, and also some very springy breasts.
This task took a while, since there were hundreds of the little bastards, but she finally collapsed onto the edge of the desk, wand hand slumping between her legs. “Phew…”
“You’ve encountered those before!?” I asked.
“Yeah…”
“Where do they come from?”
“The magical plane,” she said. “Sinistral, to be specific. They protect—“ She cut off.
“They protect what?” Jake said. “Treasure?”
“No!”
“You were going to say something,” I said.
She huffed. “They protect privacy. Paperwork and stuff. The guy who lived here was a dark warlock, and we don’t need pesky little demons around. It’s just some mischief, like a booby trap. They probably didn’t like you talking about tearing down that wall and that activated the swarm.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. Paperwork, huh? And what was a witches’ most treasured possession? A grimoire. That stuff could sell for major money on the magical auction circuit, especially if it had new spells.
As Helena left the room, waving us out with her, Jake exchanged a look with me. Is Helena sensing out some really strong magic in the houses she buys? Maybe she’s dealing that on the side. Now that would explain the price tag.
Judging by how quickly she took care of the imps, and how she knew what they were right away, I was getting the feeling that she was a better witch than Kiersten, and obviously, we didn’t have those skills at all.
Jake assessed the caved in floor. “Let’s fix that right now,” he said.
“We’re going to need more materials,” I said.
“Well, we can start, anyway.”
“So—you really don’t mind doing this?” Helena asked. “I will absolutely pay you. We’ll just keep it professional. I’m going to go work on the parlor.” She seemed a little prickly now. I think it really bothered her that she couldn’t do everything singlehandedly. It was hard not to think that she’d make an excellent partner.
Or maybe she was just prickly because she was offended that Jake told her I liked her…which brought me back to how I would definitely kill him tonight.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HELENA
BY THE END of my first day working on Lockwood House, I was completely exhausted, but that was all in a day’s work. A little less usual was hearing the Sullivans upstairs, murmuring to each other while blasting that dude rock music that every construction crew I’d ever hired seemed to listen to. Why do I get the feeling they were just talking about me and trying to cover it up…
But, they got the job done. The section of rotting wood was torn up and they were hitting a home improvement store in town tomorrow before coming back. They left warning tape in the doorway just to be cute, like I would fall through the same hole twice. This was definitely beyond what I was capable of.
I poured myself a very full glass of white wine and a microwave chicken parmesan I warmed with a spell, which meant it was charred on the edges and cold in the middle. Oh well. Pretty soon I would have that kitchen shining, but right now it was covered in debris that fell from the room above.
The parlor was all stripped down and the hardwood flooring underneath the carpet
